Blog

Learn how to have conversations that get results

Engaging Your Employees is Good, but Don’t Stop There

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published on Harvard Business Review and explores how to not only engage but also inspire your employees.

Recent studies by Bain & Company found that inspired employees are 125% more productive than satisfied employees and 56% more productive than engaged employees.

So I ask: How do we take employees from satisfied to truly inspired?

It starts by looking at the top. Managers and leaders are often the ones who decide where an organization’s resources and efforts get invested. Too often they focus solely on monetary incentives, which can lead to a purely transactional relationship. According to the article Engaging Your Employees is Good, but Don’t Stop There, real inspiration starts by connecting your team’s or the individuals’ mission to the company’s overall purpose.

Are you meeting each individual’s pyramid of needs?

“The foundational elements—call them employee satisfaction—are fundamentals such as having a safe work environment and the tools necessary to do the job. Abraham Maslow taught us that we can’t concern ourselves with higher goals until we have the necessities of life, including security. So it is in the workplace: first things first.